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Tag Archives: PICAXE

My brother-in-law mentioned that he needed a thermal switch for the fan in his shed. The building works as a heat-trap during the day, and he’d like a way of blowing the hot air out, so that it’s more habitable when he gets home from work.

I have an abundance of Picaxe chips, so that’s what I decided to use for this project, specifically the 20M2 variant. I also used a second chip to make a serialised LCD: This means the main chip only needs one data line to operate the LCD. It also made testing & development easier for me.
I could have used a RaspberryPi Zero, but I’m still at beginner level with Python, so this would have ended up as a winter-heating project instead!!

The main programme measures the ambient temperature and compares this to the user-set temperature: if equal to or above, then the fan switches on. Hysteresis of 2°C is written in to the programme, which may need altering, but testing needs to be done.

The temperature probe is a DS18B20, and support for these devices is written in to the PICAXE firmware. This makes things easy!

A hole can be drilled for access to the programming socket, but it may not need reprogramming…

I’ve made this project modular for two reasons: 1) I only have short periods of tinkering time, and can easily forget where I got up to with large projects, and 2) it aids fault-finding.
A third benefit is being able to use manufactured modules / kits instead of Veroboard. E.g. the relay module kit cost about the same as a relay on its own!

When the user changes the trigger temperature, it is stored in EEPROM in case the power is turned off. The value is loaded upon power up, with the assumption that the user will have an optimum temperature.

As this is running from a solar installation, it makes sense to monitor the voltage of the lead-acid battery, AND have a cut-off should the voltage fall too low.
Because this is a 5V system; a voltage-divider is required to measure higher voltages, so that the chip isn’t fried by receiving a voltage higher than its supply voltage. This makes use of the established potential divider equation:

V_out = (R2 / R1 + R2 ) • V_in

There is also a piezeo disc that will sound a warning if the battery voltage is too low.

The yellow button in the middle changes the mode of the unit from ‘Auto’ to ‘on’ to ‘off’.